Artificial intelligence is about to amplify the most primitive version of who we are, and spit it back at us for entertainment and profit. That's the warning from award-winning technology journalist Jacob Ward, whose decade-long journey through the cutting edge of AI and behavioural science reveals that we're on the verge of becoming caught in The Loop: a shrinking cycle of narrowed choices and lost skills that will turn us away from expertise, human connection, and creativity if we don't act fast.


From biometric surveillance states that track the movements and relationships of over a billion people, to the algorithms that determine what movies get made, to the risky multiple-choice simplicity of automated battlefield systems, this book reveals that the most obvious patterns in our behaviour-patterns that AI is most likely to vacuum up-are not the ones we want to perpetuate.


As the tech industry begins writing flawed human habits into AI, The Loop is a call to look at ourselves more clearly, so we can put only the best parts of ourselves into the systems we create.

About the Author
Jacob Ward is technology correspondent for NBC News, and previously worked as a science and technology correspondent for CNN, Al Jazeera, and PBS. The former editor-in-chief of Popular Science magazine, Ward writes for The New Yorker, Wired, and Men's Health. His ten-episode Audible podcast series, Complicated, discusses humanity's most difficult problems, and he's the host of a four-hour PBS documentary series, "Hacking Your Mind," that introduces a television audience to the fundamental scientific discoveries in human decision making and irrationality. In 2018, he was a Berggruen Fellow at Stanford University's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He lives in Oakland, California.


Book Information
ISBN 9780316487184
Author Jacob Ward
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint Hachette Books
Publisher Little, Brown & Company
Weight(grams) 285g
Dimensions(mm) 208mm * 138mm * 22mm